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Hi dr. p Congrats on getting accepted! I received mine in the mail 4 weeks after the unofficial email... they mentioned they were backed up with sending out official offers. So hopefully nothing to worry about if its late!

My thoughts are that experience is a great asset, but it doesn't necessarily have to be work experience. While I think the value of work experience to strengthen an application is large, it still falls under the embrella of showing an ad committee that you have a genuine interest in the field. Volunteer experiences, research experiences, extra-curricular experiences... can all be public health related and and help articulate exactly why you would succeed in a specific program; experiences of any sort play a large role in having defined one's skill set, one's career goals, one's emotional and intellectual curiosity towards a certain field. I myself had limited work experience in public health, but showed via other experiences why I'd be a great fit for the program I've been accepted to.

So it's pretty clear to me that a large aspect of the decision is based on my own interests and aspirations and which school/degree can meet those. But there are some great dialouges happening on these forums, and perhaps if there are people with the same decision, or who know some details about these programs/degrees/schools that aren't accessable to the average prospective student, this would be a an opportunity to share thoughts... yay!